The Weather in the Icelandic Sagas: The Enemy Without
The descriptions of the weather in medieval Icelandic sagas have long been considered unimportant, mere adjuncts to the action. This is not true: the way the weather is depicted can give us an insight into the minds of medieval Icelanders. The first part of this book illustrates how the Christian world-view of authors of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries influenced their descriptions of meteorological conditions in earlier times. The second part is more literary in approach. It points out the formulaic nature of descriptions of storms, and shows how references to the weather help to structure the narrative in some sagas. It also demonstrates how medieval Icelandic attitudes to the weather affect the portrayal of the hero.
After obtaining a degree in English from Oxford and in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, Bernadine McCreesh taught English for nearly forty years at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, Canada. She is the author of some twenty articles and conference papers in medieval studies. Her particular area of interest is how the coming of Christianity affected the literature of medieval Iceland. Her most recent project was the translation into English of François-Xavier Dillmann’s monumental work Les magiciens dans l’Islande ancienne: Études sur la représentation de la magie islandaise et de ses agents dans les sources littéraires norroises.
“In recent years, scholars applying eco-critical theory to medieval literature have shown how analysing portrayals of the natural world can illuminate our understanding of the cultures and environments in which the works under scrutiny were produced. Medieval Icelandic studies has lagged behind other medieval disciplines and though important work has been published, contributions to scholarship hitherto have almost entirely taken the form of book chapters or journal articles. Bernadine McCreesh’s new monograph, The Weather in the Icelandic Sagas: The Enemy
Without, is therefore a welcome contribution to this emerging field. […] As well as making interesting observations with regard to the function of weather-related episodes in a broader range of saga genres than is often the case in medieval Icelandic scholarship (biskupasögur are rich in environmental detail, for example, but scholars have only very recently begun to mine them for this kind of data), McCreesh opens up this fascinating subject and lays the foundations for further discussion, not least through assembling a great quantity of relevant material from the written sources. […] In sum, this short study whets the appetite, showing how much potential there is in ecologically-minded readings of a broad range of medieval Icelandic sources.”
Emily Lethbridge
Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Reykjavík; Journal of English and Germanic Philology, July 2020
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